All the Right Moves (1983)

the audience applauded

Crappy film

The acting in this movie is really good.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A fairly accurate representation of both High School; the peer pressures of sex, drugs and rock and roll so to speak and living in a depressed dried up steel town trying to make more of yourself, getting a degree and literally making all the right moves, although Cruise and Nelson are the marque stars the performances of Chris Penn and Lea Thompson are superb, 3 out of 4 stars

Sports movies are often stuck in the same old clichéd formula, but more often than not, they work. To All the Right Moves credit, it doesn't follow that winning formula, but it also doesn't necessarily create its own well-strung story.In one of his first acting roles, Tom Cruise stars alongside Craig T. Nelson and Lea Thompson as his coach and girlfriend respectively. If for nothing else, this film is worth a watch just for those performances alone. Cruise and Thompson prove to be fearless in their risqué high school roles, and Nelson plays a great antagonist and obstacle for Cruise's 'Stefen' character. I can't speak too highly on the film itself, but those performances are certainly worth 90 minutes of your time.The biggest issue with All the Right Moves is that it actually tries to make too many 'moves' with its story, pun intended. It doesn't really know what it wants to be. On one hand, it's a nice coming of age story with Thompson and Cruise. The next it's an intense football drama between two schools. Or even a film that tackles the heavy themes of class struggle and sexuality, just to name a few. There's just no real focus here. The minute you start to get invested with what Nelson's team is doing, led by Cruise among others, it changes its course to another plot point entirely. I appreciate the film's intentions, it just didn't hit home the ideas that it set out to, and it suffers because of that.What I can say is that this film was probably more of a product of its time. The soundtrack is blatantly filled with slow and smooth 80's tracks that can be distracting. The sound editing as a whole is pretty poor. The football sequences are borderline amateur. And some of the plot points have been done much better in more recent years. Sure, that's not the film's fault, but it does hinder its re-watchability to an extent. It's fun to watch a young Cruise and Thompson share great chemistry, but there's not a lot beneath that.+Cruise shows promise+Attempts to explore deep themes-But fails at most of them-Misguided direction56/100

Actors are trying, but the director and writer appear to be going through the motions. Clichéd dialogue / story lines, and amped up dramatic background music (turn volume to 11!) do not a good movie make.People in this movie look overly self-conscious that they ARE in a movie, even background people (eyes shift nervously everywhere, BUT toward the camera, which made this viewer conscious that they were trying oh so hard to not look at the camera! very distracting!).Cliché, cliché, cliché... like being forced to watch Iron Eagle.. yuck.way too much like An Officer and a Gentleman in Pennsylvania!probably why this guy never directed another major movie after this and Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)...He and/or his bosses must have realized he was out of his element.

Directed by Michael Chapman, "All The Right Moves" stars Tom Cruise as a kid who seeks to escape the drudgery of small-town life by winning a football scholarship.Typically in such films, it's only our central hero who wishes to skip town. But in "Moves", everyone in the town is hoping for a scholarship or chance to flee. Because of this, they're all competing against one another, and we the audience are always aware that if one succeeds it's only at someone else's expense.Who would ordinarily be "the villain" of this picture, a football coach who kicks Cruise off the team, is thus painted in a sympathetic and complex light. He too is shown to only be acting in his own personal interests, all in the hopes of obtaining a career promotion. The end result of all of this is, yes, a typical fairy tale ending, but also a weird advocation for a kind of communal collaboration in which everyone learns to work as a team and stop trampling over one another.Beyond this the film is beautifully shot, captures the dreary, rain drenched ambiance of small town Pennsylvania, features a couple surprisingly raw dialogue sequences and drifts into issues like teen pregnancy and social determinism, issues which these flicks typically avoid. Cruise, young and per-fame, sells his role with conviction.7.9/10 – Despite a terrible last act, this odd little film is interesting in the way it merges the grit of 1970s cinema with the superficiality of 80s Hollywood. Worth one viewing.